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Talk:All About : Kristoff/@comment-108.39.98.157-20171104214417
Anna and Elsa are NOT Strongly Written Characters Anna throughout the movie is, quite frankly, kind of stupid. That's the argument Anna-haters are putting forth, at least, and there is some basis for it. She leaves control of the kingdom in an outsider's hands, she refuses to believe that Elsa will hurt her despite witnessing how dangerous Elsa's powers can be (eternal winter, spiky ice shafts, frozen rivers, the works) and not really knowing her sister as a person at all, and she constantly needs things pointed out to her. Such as the fact that Kristoff is in love with her. Or that you can't climb a mountain without mountain-climbing gear. And she decides to run off into the eternal winter without donning proper snow gear. And interestingly enough, Anna-lovers respond to this by saying, "Well, yeah, but that's part of her character arc!" I've seen people call Anna brave, outspoken, and strong. Anna is only brave because she lacks some fundamental information that might otherwise give her serious inhibitions. Her outspokenness is an extension of her goofy characterization, lending itself more to awkward humor and a "look how delightfully clumsy I am" attitude that may actually be comparable with Bella Swan more than anyone else. And her strength really only comes from the fact that she is willing to face her problems head-on, which in another set of circumstances would actually be great, but the issue there is that all of her problems are external. She is morally in the right throughout the entire film, and she never grows as a character. Even her final moment of what is supposed to be a great character climax has been forced by the walking plot-device Hans, and she's been chasing after Elsa the entire movie, so it's really no surprise that she decides to throw herself in front of that sword. Show of hands, how many people thought that she would actually go make out with Kristoff rather than try to stop Hans? Not hoped that she did not, or were relieved when she did not, but actually, genuinely expected her to choose kissing Kristoff over saving Elsa? I'm not so sure this reads as the great moment of selflessness it's supposed to. It's selfless, certainly, but when has Anna actually been selfish? Despite the vanity she exhibits at the beginning of the film, Anna's main desire as outlined by "For the First Time in Forever" is companionship. She's very lonely, and even if there is a castle staff for her to interact with, maybe she's actually just starved for company with peers of her own age, and hey, romantic attention would be great for her as well. Something very important to note, however, is that Anna's decision to jump into an engagement with Hans isn't as desperate-for-true-love-romance-motivated as the movie would love for us to think it is. Anna's desire for companionship is, first and foremost, what she wants, and the idea of romantic love comes in as a whimsical afterthought that envelops the rest of the song. Which actually reflects the outcome of the movie. A film that started off about two sisters becomes entrenched in a romance-driven side plot. "Frozen" then uses this as a means of subverting the "True Love's First Kiss" trope, which is not actually as firmly ingrained in Disney culture as this movie would have us believe. (I'll happily do a sound off on that for anyone who's interested.) But this misdirection is contingent on us believing that Anna does not actually know what true love is to begin with. Anna, however, has loved Elsa unconditionally throughout the movie, wants to be close to her sister, and help Elsa through her emotional issues. Regarding true romantic love? On Coronation Day, Anna is under a deadline. This is what everyone overlooks the most. In "For the First Time in Forever", Anna sings about the possibility of finding love now that she finally has the chance to interact with people, and one of her final lines is "I know this all ends tomorrow so it has to be today!" She knows that the moment Coronation Day is over, her shot at a life that is not devoid of human interaction or the potential for romantic love is gone. She's gotta find love today so as to escape her loneliness. Cue Hans. Now, rewatching "Love is an Open Door" on YouTube is a different experience the second time around because we know that Hans is gonna turn out to be a total jerk, but the problem is, he never reads as one at any point in the movie prior to his abrupt character shift. Anna's decision to jump into an engagement with Hans is, therefore, not purely motivated by the fact that he is conveniently there, but also by the fact that she clicks with him, and they get along incredibly well prior to the plot twist. Hans could certainly be presenting an illusion to Anna as a means of getting close to her, which is what we'll always carry with us after watching "Frozen" for the first time, but even after Anna leaves, Hans does not read as a power-hungry leech. He hands out blankets to the freezing citizens of Arrendale, and tries to make sure everyone is able to survive the winter weather. Unless this guy is shown kicking puppies in some scene that I'm not aware of, he's just... not a villain. Not until it is convenient for him to be one. And considering Elsa was meant to be the villain of this movie, Hans is very much a character of convenience. He was scripted in after Elsa's villainy was scripted out, and the result is a quick and frankly very noticeable patch job. But seeing as Disney has never really accepted the fact that "antagonist" and "villain" are not interchangeable terms, I guess we'll always need a clear-cut villain in the Princess subgenre. Disney has done redeemable villains (see: John Silver from "Treasure Planet" and Jumba from "Lilo & Stitch"), but we've never seen a redeemable female villain from them. Which is a shame, really, because Elsa would have made a fantastic redeemable villain. Getting back to Anna, though, she is actually a pretty selfless character. Her motivations for marriage could indeed be interpreted as selfish if you look at it the way I have, but the movie ignores the escape motive in favor of focusing purely on the love motive. This hinders the selfish aspect of her character. Someone who is starved for love but who has demonstrated the willingness to be emotionally available to someone clearly understands that love is a give-and-take dynamic, not just all take. If anything, Anna is too selfless. She does not want to take power away from the rightful ruler of the kingdom, repeatedly risks her life for the sake of her sister, stops Kristoff from crushing Olaf's summery dream, is willing to emotionally be there for Elsa and work through her issues with her sister while said sister just wants to run away, etc. And yet, even during that ball scene when Anna "makes the evening all about herself" by demanding to know what she'd done to deserve Elsa's cold shoulder, she's right. She has no idea why Elsa won't talk to her, and she can't understand why her sister--who she was so close to at the beginning of their lives--has turned away from her. That's not being selfish so much as it's saying, "I want to work through these problems with you because I love you. Please don't shut me out!" And Anna explicitly says almost exactly this when she confronts Elsa in the ice castle. But even after Elsa has hurt her again (mortally, this time), even after she was chased away from Elsa's ice castle by a snow golem, even after Hans aka Mr. Plot Twist abruptly reveals that Anna will not be receiving a kiss from him and will die, her concern feels like it is just as much for Elsa as it is for herself. She tells Hans, "You're not match for Elsa!" (thereby showing that she has confidence in her sister but also wanting to dissuade Hans from going after Elsa at all) and the idea of him "not getting away with it" applies to the situation as a whole, not just to locking Anna in a room to die. But even then, when Anna is on the couch alone, dying from a frozen heart, she does not slip into moments of introspection and consider or say anything about Elsa being the one who hurt her. Instead, she's actually very concerned for the suddenly-appearing Olaf and the fact that he will melt if he stays with her. Again, that's pretty selfless on both characters' parts, putting your friend's needs ahead of your own. But Olaf mostly serves as another distraction at this point rather than as a source for dialogue centered around Elsa's refusal to let Anna in. Olaf instead steers Anna into thinking about Kristoff, and she doesn't reflect on what brought her to this point, or that maybe she pushed Elsa too hard, or even that maybe Elsa was too emotionally fragile to be pushed at all. She's never afraid of or angry at her sister. There's no emotional obstacle to overcome. It just does not happen. So why is it that Anna needs to perform an act of selfless love in order to save herself when that's really all she's been doing throughout the movie? I don't mind that Anna has flaws like vanity and incompetence. Those actually do lend themselves to her character, more so than cutesy clumsiness (which is an overused cop out for teenage girl characters). And I really do think that a lot of her stupidity isn't actually stupidity, but a lack of fundamental knowledge. I wasn't expecting her to know how to do every little thing under the sun, and do them without any struggle whatsoever, and even the whole handing power over to Hans thing can be chalked up to poor world-building. (Again, where was the person in charge prior to Elsa's coronation?) However, I do mind that, in spite of all of this, Anna never grows emotionally. She's certainly a consistent character (much more so than Elsa, which definitely makes Anna the stronger character of the two, but that's a lesser of two evils kind of thing) but despite her flaws and virtues, she has no emotional arc. Her constant desire to be close to Elsa is something that we're supposed to admire and sympathize with, because "Awww... sisters!" Anna suffers from what is actually a very dangerous notion going around the writing world, namely that a "strong female character" has to be externally strong (meaning she faces and overcomes external obstacles) and not in need of development because she's already nearly-perfect with little flaws that only serve to make her more likeable. The fundamental problem here is that this phrase replaces "strongly written" with "strong", and a lot of people are buying into that. A female character that is emotionally weak, naïve, and struggles internally can be an incredibly strongly written character, and such a character certainly has the opportunity to grow and evolve. "Strong female characters" that are strong in the misconception of the word deny this for themselves and others, especially when they dip into Sueism. A prime example of a well-developed female character that has room to grow and evolve is Sansa Stark from the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Not Anna from "Frozen". And this is not just because Sansa gets to grow and evolve over the course of a series of books while Anna only has one movie. Taken even from the first novel alone, that Sansa (who does not at all take up a majority of the narrative space) sees her dreamy view of the world shattered. She realizes how wrong she was about the world around her, and begins to open her eyes to how power struggles work. She's still naïve about a lot of things, is manipulated and makes mistakes that have serious consequences, but she is taught a very harsh lesson, and learns. And that's just in the one book. Compare this to Anna, whose only goal is to be close to her sister. That never changes. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and is, in my opinion, a good moral for a Disney Princess Movie. But rather than sticking with this goal, the movie's focus is allowed to wander because the writers felt the need to distract us for some reason. There are things that come flying out of left field like Hans's betrayal and Kristoff's romantic feelings, but ultimately the film is always about Anna wanting to be close to Elsa, despite all the reasons she has to not want that at all. She never stops trying (except for a brief moment during the montage when she finally stops knocking on the door), is willing to plunge into the wilderness for someone she barely knows, and never, ever questions why she so badly wants to be close to Elsa. I believe that, had the movie actually focused on this relationship and not been afraid to allow its female characters to spend more than five minutes onscreen together at any given time, "Frozen" could have been an incredibly powerful movie that showed where different kinds of (emotional) strength actually come from as well as emphasizing that the bonds you build up with your sister (or brother, parents, friends, whatever extension we could get out of that) are very rewarding in and of themselves. But instead, "Frozen" attempts to do this through misdirection, and it ultimately fails. As for Anna, I think that she had incredible potential as a character, much like the potential Sansa Stark actually has, but there is something (or someone) stopping "Frozen" from actually delving into her.